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Talk:You Are Not Alone/@comment-3575890-20140426202308
Unpopular opinion: I love Theon Greyjoy. I hate his choices, but I love him. He's complex, ambiguous, relatable, and very sympathetic in my eyes. Yes, he has committed unspeakable evils and I do not at all condone them, but none of that stems from him being a simply evil piece of shit like Joffrey, Walder, and Ramsay. Theon is not nearly as one-dimensional as all that. He doesn't take sadistic pleasure out of hurting people, he feels deeply and intensely and is driven by emotional whims. He has no true malice in his heart. Just an empty void of loneliness, despair, and desperation to be loved and accepted by his neglectful father. He was ripped away from his biological family when he was just a small boy, and though the Starks treated him well, he never felt as though he really belonged, though I would argue that Theon is more Stark than he will ever be Greyjoy. He may have iron in his blood, but he has the North ingrained in him. The Starks are his true family and he loves them, no matter that he turned on them to appease his father - He LOVES them and it's always pained him that he's never truly been theirs. When he relinquishes his allegiance to them to gain the approval of his biological family, he repeatedly has to remind himself that he's Ironborn. His father whom has conclusively decided that the Starks have converted his son into a Northerner, shoves him to the side. As the result, Theon is compelled to believe he has to reestablish himself as a Greyjoy to get his family to love him because he cannot bear to feel like the outsider in yet ANOTHER family he loves. He refuses to go through that pain again with his ACTUAL family. He loves the Starks, but he also loves his biological family, or at the very least, believes he should, and he knows his loyalties cannot lie with both families. He knew he had to make a choice, and he chose blood, which I cannot fault him for at all. He lost so much time with his real family and felt there was much to be compensated for. But there has been no opportunity to because they want NOTHING to do with him and it hurts him so fucking badly. More than any physical torture Ramsay could muster up for him. That feeling of having no substantial identity or home is the one true bane of his existence, and the very root of all of his insecurities, his self-esteem issues, and constant need for validation, which is why he takes to extreme lengths to try to make that all to away going so far as to relinquish his loyalty to the only family he's ever known in order to gain his asshole family's approval. From thereon, he proceeds to make all the wrong choices to appease his family, acting as he believes he's supposed to - how his father and sister would want him to - but he feels terrible the whole while. To dull the guilt, he continually tries to rationalize and justify his actions to himself, or aloud to Bran, Maester Luwin, Ramsay - anyone that would listen to his musings of his inner turmoil. He tries desperately to convince himself that he's acting on duty and doing what NEEDS to be done for his family, but he hates it. He doesn't want to betray the Starks. He thinks he HAS to, because the Ironborn are supposed to hate the Starks and so he maddeningly tries to convince himself that he does too, but he doesn't. He loves them no matter how much he wishes he didn't and he later breaks down sobbing after he's come to grips with what he's done and all he's lost. All Theon ever wanted was to be welcomed back with open arms by his family, whom shunned him immediately upon his arrival. All he hoped to gain from taking Winterfell, was their love and acceptance. All he wants is familial belonging and a one true identity and home. All he ever gets, however, is pain.